


pulling me down to the deep

by theanxietyalien



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Or not, Past Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 14, Torture, Trauma, spencer and penelope need hugs, spencer is good at bottling up emotions, there's a happy ending i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-24 06:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30067728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theanxietyalien/pseuds/theanxietyalien
Summary: There’s darkness but his eyes have adjusted, adjusted to the only light being that single swinging bulb in the grey and lifeless basement. After four months light seems stranger than the dark and he remembers when he used to fear that, fear darkness, fear what has now become his home, a tight and cold embrace, a bath he soaks into when oblivion hits.Spencer and Penelope are taken for a whole lot longer than a day when The Believers make their appearance.
Relationships: Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss & Spencer Reid, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid, Luke Alvez & Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia & Spencer Reid
Comments: 16
Kudos: 44





	1. i was down to the wire

**Something’s not right**.

That’s all he can think when the slow and steady drift of consciousness fills brightness in the dark parts of his skull. There’s too much light. Light behind closed eyelids. There’s pressure in his hand. There’s a smell that’s intensely familiar and utterly foreign all at once that wafts in through his nostrils. There’s a _beep, beep, beep_ …

_There’s darkness but his eyes have adjusted, adjusted to the only light being that single swinging bulb in the grey and lifeless basement. After four months light seems stranger than the dark and he remembers when he used to fear that, fear darkness, fear what has now become his home, a tight and cold embrace, a bath he soaks into when oblivion hits._

_In the black he can see Penelope sleeping in a pile at his side, curled up in both her blanket and his own and he’s struck by how normal, how peaceful, she seems like this, how if he squints his eyes he can see past those new lines on her face and pretend she’s fallen asleep on his couch with_ Doctor Who _on in the background and a bowl of popcorn in her lap._

_He does that sometimes, just pretends, but the present always pulls him back like a tight and sharp and unrelenting vice, gripping him from the inside out._

_A loud, broken, crashing **THUD!** echoes across the ceiling above them. Penelope only stirs in the slightest, giving a small whimper. He cards his fingers through her tangled blonde hair and tries to quiet her. She gives into his touch._

_There’s shouting. He can’t make it out. **Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong** …_

_He’s thinking about waking her because usually when there’s sound there’s pain coming too and he doesn’t want her vulnerable and taken off guard when they burst in with fists clenched but the door to the basement **CRASHES** open before he can and shouts of, **“FBI!”** fill the air and Penelope startles upwards, nearly screaming, eyes wild like a cornered animal’s. _

_He gets the feeling._

_Flashlights sweep the darkness and fall upon them and he can’t see the faces behind those beams of light but he can hear the voices, the achingly familiar voices, and he thinks he’s dreaming, it’s not real, he’ll wake up and it will all be dust at his feet …_

His eyelids crack open. His throat feels dry. He tries to gauge the situation before entering it fully because it still can’t be real, it’s not real, he’s hallucinating, he’s lost it, it was only a matter of time, really, with his mother’s history, with the stress …

“ _Spence_?”

That voice snaps him fast out of his reverie and into the present. His eyes slip open wider. He turns his head and it hurts and he wants it to stop hurting because the illusion is bad enough, isn’t it?

“— _JJ_?” His voice is hoarse and cracked and he barely recognizes it, really, it seems out of place in these clean hospital walls. He can see her bright blue eyes are watery, red and puffy.

“Oh my God, Spence. You’re— _you’re awake_.” She’s breathless, almost, and it’s nearly too much for him to register, nearly too much at all. “ _Hey_. How— how are you feeling, huh?”

He just hums a bit, eyes falling shut for a moment, and he can hear her suck in a breath, probably afraid he’s gone, so he cracks them open again. “Penelope?” He rasps, some sort of delirious panic leaking into his words. He must’ve been sedated, he’s _foggy_ , he’s too foggy.

“She’s okay. She’s okay, Spence. You both are.”

“Need to see her.”

“She’s right across the hall. She’s still asleep, but I _promise you_ , she’s there.”

He hums again, not quite satisfied but not quite able to argue, either. “What happened?”

“We got a break in the case. We— we found you. God, Spence, I’m so sorry. I am _so sorry_ we couldn’t find you sooner.”

“One hundred and thirty-seven days,” he murmurs, then, “I’m okay.”

“You— kept count? Never mind, of course you did.” And there’s something in her voice that he thinks may be a smile but it’s sad, too.

“You should be with Penelope. She needs you more than I do.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Derek _Chocolate Thunder_ Morgan hasn’t left her bedside since you got here. Sorry, you’re not getting rid of me.”

He just nods. He feels … _Something_. Some way. But he can’t put his finger on it. It’s all just hazy. It’s all just … _Unreal_. None of it makes sense.

“Am I dead?” He asks, words slipping out before he can stop to think how _concerning_ they must be, how they must profile, how they must sound. JJ sucks in a breath, startled.

“Wha— no, Spence. No. You’re not dead.”

He hums again, nodding. “I think I should be, though.”

“You— _what_?”

“Statistically, the odds of being found alive four months following an abduction are so miniscule they border on impossibility. I should be dead.”

“Well— you’re not. You’re here. And I’m not letting you go again.”

Nods again, not quite believing. “Think I’m gonna sleep more,” he murmurs, and before she can respond he slips once more into the dark oblivion he knows so well.

*******

_They’ve been moved. Again and again. A few times. He’d kept track at first. That’s a  
chance at escape, knowing where they are. But there were times he’d been unconscious, the handle of a gun colliding sickeningly with his skull until the world went dark. There were times he’d been blindfolded, enveloped in an inky darkness he can only relate to the worst of his days. There were times when he’d been awake, but Garcia’s gagged sobs beside him kept him from focusing on anything else but a hot, burning rage at her going through this._

_He’d meant it when he’d said, “You might as well shoot me.” He had. He didn’t want this again. He hadn’t been afraid. He’d just been stubborn, set in his ways, not willing to fall back into the dark depths of whatever Hell the world wanted to pull him down into again._

_Then that car had roared to life, screeched to a halt in front of him, Penelope Garcia’s palms colliding desperately with the window, and he’d known it was over. He had to stay alive to keep her alive. He had to give in. He had to do— whatever the **fuck** he needed to this time to keep her safe. No, there’s not fear. There is aching, bruising, wanting to crush the world in his hands **rage** that she’s going through this and he has no choice but to cut out more pieces of himself to keep them both breathing._

_The basement they’re settled in, it’s cold, it’s dark, the walls are concrete grey, the floors are concrete grey, there are eyelet hooks in the floor attached to chains attached to cuffs on their ankles, there are two blankets that are too thin crumpled on the floor beside them._

_The first time that metal door bangs open he expects another blindfold, more handcuffs, more rough shoves into another van or semi, more of the world flashing disorientingly past him in ways he doesn’t understand._

_Instead the man, who is dressed as if he is approaching another day in the office, just your typical Wednesday humpday, stops in front of Penelope and just by body language he knows what’s coming, he’s a profiler, he’s felt torture before, he knows, he knows._

_“Stop, no,” his voice is more forceful than he expects from someone who hasn’t eaten, drank, slept except for bouts of unconsciousness in days. “Hurt me.”_

_There’s a low chuckle. A gasp from Penelope that he hears is wet with tears. He doesn’t look at her because his resolve may crack and he can’t break. “What’s that?”_

_“I said, hurt me.”_

_“Well, if you’re asking for it …”_

_He almost loses track of the punches, kicks, bruising touches. Soft groans and hard breaths break past his lips but he never screams._

_When the man leaves, Spencer lies in a piled heap for just a few moments, trying to get a handle on his breathing, his voice before he comforts the violently sobbing woman crumpled next to him. Breathe in, out, he sits up, crosses an arm over his bruised (cracked?) ribs._

_Then he crawls over._

_“It’s okay. I’m okay.”_

_“Oh, my sweet, sweet boy wonder,” she sniffles, wiping a red droplet of blood trailing from his lips free with her thumb. “Don’t pretend for me.”_

*******

There’s a hand on his shoulder, there’s a hand, _whose hand_ , he doesn’t know, he feels it as he approaches from the dark depths of unconsciousness and panic clutches his heart and—

His limbs flail, achingly, brokenly as he wakes up, biting back a scream that threatens to break free from his lips because _he can’t break, he can’t break, he can’t break_ —

“Don’t hurt her, please don’t hurt her, don’t—”

“Spencer!”

“Hurt me instead, please—”

“Reid!”

His body jerks like he’s been dumped back into the present by some cruel god. Shaking, body shaking, eyes wide, they flash around the room in panicked, jerky movements, he doesn’t know where he is, _where is he_ —

“Hey, hey, Pretty Boy,” the voice is deep, smooth, familiar. He sucks in a shuddering breath, eyes finding a familiar gaze.

“— Morgan?”

“Yeah— yeah, kid, it’s me. Just Morgan.”

Spencer’s heart still thuds, _pound, pound, pound_ , in his chest, but he hears the mechanical _beep_ of his heart monitor slow. His body still trembles. He leans forward, putting his head in his hands, trailing his fingers down his face before running them wildly through his unkempt hair.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, nuh-uh, none of that.”

“I— I thought …”

“I know, kid.”

He looks up, eyes still wide. He swallows, shaking his head.

“You called me Pretty Boy,” he murmurs, “I heard you.”

“Okay, _and_?” Confusion drips from warm tones. “I always call you Pretty Boy.”

“I— I just … don’t think the name applies anymore, really.”

He doesn’t have to look at himself in the mirror to know he’s a mess of broken, sliced open, cut, black and blue skin. He _hasn’t_ seen himself in a mirror, but he can feel the scars on his skin when he runs his fingers over them, raised and jagged. If he presses onto his cheekbone he can feel the dull ache of a bruise. There’s a split in his lip, he thinks, because there’s a coppery tinge of blood in his mouth. He tries to do an inventory but it makes his head spin.

Before Morgan can protest, he interrupts.

“What’s broken?”

“Huh?”

“My body. What’s broken? Can I see my chart?”

“You … Want to see your chart?”

Spencer’s brow furrows. “Yes?”

“Kid, I don’t think you want to—”

“Please, Morgan?”

Derek sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose.

“How ‘bout I just give you the rundown?”

Spencer huffs, frustrated, but nods.

Morgan leans forward in his chair, eyes searching like he’s gauging for a response. Once a profiler, always a profiler. “Couple’a broken ribs. Your knee— the one that got shot? They said it broke, healed over again all wrong. Said you’ll need some kinda surgery to fix it. You’ve got a lot of bruising, some pretty nasty cuts. Three that needed stitches. Got a concussion. Some lung damage. Reid— you’re _hurt_. Isn’t that enough?”

He ignores that, barreling forwards. “Garcia?”

“Kid—”

Irritation flashes in the genius’ eyes. “Can I see her?”

Derek’s voice goes quiet. “They’ve had to sedate her, Spencer. A few times. Acute Stress Disorder. You’re a profiler, you know how that works.”

“I need to see her.”

“Reid—”

“ _Derek_.”

The older man runs a hand down his face like the stubborn, injured kid he calls his brother has exhausted all the fight left in him.

“You realize I’m breakin’ rules for you, right?”

“Please?”

Sighs out through his teeth.

“Let me get you a wheelchair. No way you’re walkin’ like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never done a multi-chapter fic before, but I sure am gonna try it!


	2. give me that deathless death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternately titled, "Spencer Goes a Little Cellblock D."  
> ... And it doesn't go so well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely the most physically traumatizing chapter. The rest is mostly emotional and implied physical trauma.  
> Enjoy!

_He’s had to start letting them hurt her._

_The hands, the feet, the flashes of knives that fall so violently against her skin, that leave bruises that are purple and blue, red slices that split her in two, they are hideous, not by color but by idea, by design, they hurt him more than the ones that mar his own flesh, drip blood from his body, knock him to the floor, that leave him breathless and struggling for air— but she’d begged, begged, begged because he’d been so close to death’s door taking every beating, every cut, every bruise, and she’d sobbed so brokenly that if he didn’t let them hurt her then he’d die and leave her alone and she wouldn’t survive without him, she just wouldn’t._

_But he feels sick._

_It’s been going on for too long. Or maybe it hasn’t. Maybe today is just a bad day. Aren’t all the days bad days? A worse day. It’s been going on for too long. He can’t think straight and maybe that’s why he does it, because any smart person, any genius, would know how **dumb** what he’s about to do would be._

_Their Believer, their abductor, their Hell, what should they call them? (There are multiple, they alternate, sometimes new faces appear, there’s no pattern, it’s all just pain, sickening, endless pain), his back is turned on Spencer and he’s leaned over with Garcia’s shirt clenched in his fist keeping her upright and Spencer just feels this white, hot rage settle like a toxin all over his body, into his bloodstream._

_He stands, all 6’1” of been-to-prison manpower, and shoves his foot roughly into the back of the man’s knee until he crumples forwards, dropping Garcia, body hitting the floor in a way that’s familiar to his own sprawling out, hurting, slamming against concrete._

_There’s no fear, there’s just rage, rage, rage._

_Penelope is screaming **no, no, no** …_

_Spencer is weak, malnutrition, aching limbs, but he gets a few good punches in, feels the skin on his knuckles split in a way he’d never expected to be so satisfying. He thinks of the promise he’d made to himself to protect the one’s he loves and he thinks of how he’s failing and his hands are bleeding, dripping warm, red blood—_

_Then he’s on his back. He doesn’t know how, just that there’s a man sneering and towering over him with a line of crimson dripping from one nostril, a flush blooming behind one eye. **He’d done that**._

_He can’t take a moment to feel anything, fear, pride, any more anger, before Spencer feels a pressure on his knee, his bad knee, his eyes widen, lips open in protest but not before—_

**_AGONY_ ** _._

_For the first time, he screams, this feral, broken, twisted scream, as the unsub’s (That’s what they used to call them, isn’t it? Now they’re just death, they are Death, they are pain) foot stomps down and his leg splits in two and gives a sickening **CRACK**! and Spencer can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t think, it’s all just pain radiating over him in waves and he feels bile rising in his throat and he twists to his side which only hurts more, it hurts, it hurts, whatever’s in his stomach empties onto the floor beside him and all he can hear are Garcia’s sobs as he’s lifted by the shirt in ways that make these stars dance violently across his vision and a hiss in his ear. “ **This isn’t over**.” And then Death disappears through the metal door and he’s left, writhing, on the floor._

*******

Derek helps him hobble over and into the wheelchair and, sitting down heavily, he watches as the larger man (much larger, now, Spencer is all skin in bones, these angular, terrifying edges that look like they should split through his skin, they’re so sharp) maneuvers his IV bag from the rolling stand by his bed to the hook fixed above him. Spencer can tell he’s not happy about this. He can also tell that he’s not going to say no because Spencer has been missing for four months and realistically, he could probably get Derek to do just about anything right now if he’s stubborn enough.

It hurts more than he expects it to. Just the tiny jerks of the wheelchair, as gentle as Derek is trying to be, send these shockwaves of pain ricocheting down the lengths of his nerves, send his head spinning in a way that’s nauseating, make his eyes squeeze shut and his hands grip the arms of the wheelchair like an iron vice. He bites it all back behind his teeth.

They sneak past the nurse’s station and into the room across the hall and there she is, quiet in bed, Emily at her side. Emily, who looks at him, then to Derek, then to him again, with raised eyebrows and questioning, expectant eyes.

“Kid is insistent,” Morgan clarifies, and he can tell she’s holding back a smile. Emily’s never really cared much for rules.

“Hey, Spence. Welcome back,” she says, and he blinks suddenly, dazedly because he’s surrounded by more kind voices than he has been in months. It doesn’t feel right. He just nods this jumpy nod, one hand reaching to brush against his opposite arm, sudden anxiety clutching his insides. He tries to ignore it and make his tired eyes settle over the woman he’d come for.

She’s bruised, battered, she’s thinner than she should be, but her expression is calm, peaceful. His eyes drop to her chest and he watches it rise and fall for a few breaths.

He gulps down thickly, tears blurring his vision for the first time in a long time.

He hadn’t wanted her to get hurt.

That was the whole point. The whole point of him throwing his revolver to the ground with a soft _thud_ that had sealed his fate. He just hadn’t known what that fate would be. He’d thought, like always, within a few days the team would be busting down doors, or he’d be leaving little breadcrumbs for them to follow along, that he’d be hurt but she’d be okay.

But the days went _on, and on, and on_.

There were times in those four months where he’d wondered if he’d made the right choice.

That’s a little sick, he thinks. The idea that the alternative, the both of them dead, right there in that parking garage, might have been the better option. But sometimes he’d wondered if being dead would’ve been better than seeing that bright, hopeful light fade from her eyes, seeing her go from a puddle of tears to something raw and tough, too tough for Penelope Garcia.

He just hadn’t wanted her to get hurt.

“Hey, woah, Spence?” It’s Emily’s voice. He’s vaguely aware that he’s trembling, that his nails are digging into the skin of his arm. “Spencer, can you hear me?”

He can but it’s through this roaring ocean in his ears. His breaths come in rasps, they hurt his lungs in a way that he knows too well ( _in his head his hair is wet again and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t breathe_ —)

_He can’t move. He’s losing circulation, wrists ziptied to the arms of a wooden chair (isn’t that familiar, that rickety seat, seeming like it may break under him, deposit him roughly to the concrete), ankles tied to the legs. His broken knee is twisted in this horrible, painful way, and he’s trying to think around it, the stabbing, the throb, the burn. He breathes in deep, steady breaths as one man stares uncaring down at him, another making loud, crashing noises behind him._

_They’re trying to unsettle him._

_“Hear you gave my partner here a little nosebleed. A black eye.” Spencer just glares. The man doesn’t react. “You understand we can’t let that shit fly.”_

_Spencer’s gaze is hard. “What, the broken knee wasn’t enough?”_

_A slap slams his head to the side, stinging red against his cheek._

_“I don’t think you’re sorry.” His voice is patronizing, demeaning._

_“I won’t be sorry.”_

_A laugh. “We’ll see about that.”_

_The second man comes into view. Buckets of water in hand. A cloth, dark and worn. Spencer tries not to let the fear that sinks like a stone into his stomach show on his face because he’s not stupid, he knows in detail methods of torture tactics, he knows the longterm effects on the body, the statistics—_

_He feels a hand tangle in his hair and yank his head back, rough, hurting. A low grunt escapes his lips as his fingers splay out, tensed._

_The cloth covers his face and he can’t see but he knows what’s coming._

_The water floods over him and he can’t breathe. His lungs are gasping for air, his body is jerking against the restraints, his world is lit up in pain, in panic, stars dancing in front of his eyes beautifully and horribly._

_It stops. The cloth comes off, his hair is released, he rockets forward, sucking in air, vision dark around the edges, sputtering up water that splatters the floor beneath him._

_“Are you sorry yet?”_

_Spencer’s voice is hoarse. “No.”_

_Head yanked back again and he’s underwater. His chest burns and heaves, the way his body fights instinctively yanks his knee in uncomfortable ways but that pain is barely noticeable around this panicked, burning sensation flooding his lungs._

_Again, he lurches forward._

_“Beg.”_

_“No.”_

_Drowning, he’s drowning, he’s drowning, the sea is sucking him down, his consciousness is fading at the edges._

_Before the darkness can envelope him in open, merciful arms he’s heaving for air again._

_Again and again and again. For once, he can’t count, because it’s all just this blur of unimaginable pain—_

_“Do you think you have a choice?”_

_His body is shuddering, jerking violently against his will. “Please, I’m sorry—” He feels tears rolling warm tracks down his cheeks and hopes the drip, drip, drip of water masks them._

_Then he’s drowning again._

_Something like a sob wracks through him, his voice is trembling like that time in Tobias’ shed, begging for the only personality that showed him care._

_There is no care here._

_“Pl— please, I’m s— sorry, I’m sorry, please—” He’s breaking, he’s breaking, he’s giving in, he hates it, he hates all of this, it all hurts, it hurts too much, he can only take so much, he’s only so strong, his life has only hardened him so much, he is not invincible, he is not Superman, or if he is he is surrounded by his Kryptonite—_

_“You gonna try any shit like that again?”_

_He shakes his head, violently, voice a broken rasp. “N— no, no.”_

_“Good.” His head is thrust back by the hair again and his body tenses, waiting for the flood. It doesn’t come. A threat hissed in his ear does. “Don’t fucking forget it.”_

He flies back into the world of the living with a painful, wheezing gasp, sees these wide, worried, confused eyes trained on him.

“I’m— I’m good,” he murmurs, trying to ignore those eyes.

“ ** _Spencer_** —” it comes from both their lips at once and he startles at the intensity, jumping in his seat. They look at each other with something in their eyes he can’t decipher. He should be able to. That’s his job. _That was his job_.

“She needs something bright,” he rasps suddenly, so quiet it’s almost to himself. Two quizzical stares bore into his skin. “It’s been dark.” It’s still not enough. “Penelope is colorful but it’s all been grey. She hides behind her colors but I couldn’t give her anything but grey. She needs something colorful.” Derek and Emily, again, look to each other.

“Yeah— yeah, okay, Spence. How about I go to the gift shop and get her something colorful?” Emily’s voice is tender, pleading. He doesn’t meet her eyes. Just nods. She looks back at Derek. “You got this?” There’s a word of affirmation, then she’s gone.

Spencer sniffles a little bit, then tries to stumble from his chair. Derek’s hand is at his chest, pushing him back. “Woah, woah, woah—”

“I need to get closer.”

He feels the ground moving beneath him as he’s wheeled close enough that he can lace his fingers through hers.

“She’s stronger than she thinks.”

Derek looks them over appraisingly. “You both are.”

If he hears, Spencer doesn’t react. Just tucks a strand of wild blonde hair behind her ear. “She was scared. I couldn’t— I couldn’t make her less scared. She would cry, but eventually she just … She stopped crying. I tried thinking of ways to get her out of there, but I—”

“ _Spencer_.” He lurches at his name, gaze meeting dark eyes. “You gonna talk about yourself any?”

He swallows around a rock in his throat, averting his gaze. Ignoring the question. He hears Morgan’s sigh. “You can’t do this, kid.”

Something flares up inside him. “Do _what_ , Morgan?”

And for a moment, there he is. There is that small, broken boy who’d spent two days dying handcuffed to a chair in a small room in a shed in rural Georgia. Spencer knows— he _knows_ they’re all watching him, waiting for him to break into a thousand tiny, unrepairable pieces. They’re profilers, they’re his friends, they’re looking for the signs.

It makes Spencer want to scream.

Morgan doesn’t flinch. “You _know_ what.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” through gritted teeth, his hand tightens around Penelope’s like he’s protecting her from some threat. He’s bristling, turning away from Derek, cutting off line of sight, and Derek knows he’s losing this battle.

“You can’t do this forever.”

Spencer ignores him. Again.

He hears the sigh, imagines the appearance of him leaning his head back, eyes closed, maybe running a hand down his face. But he doesn’t turn to look.

He just lets the time tick by.

Emily comes rushing back in with a giant, rainbow giraffe, holding a heart sign and a, “ _Get well soon_!”, and doesn’t appear to immediately notice the tension.

“ _Hey, how about this_ — woah, what’d I miss?”

“ _Nothing_.” Spencer doesn’t mean to snap, but it comes out that way anyways. Then, his gaze softens on the stuffed toy, and he nods his head. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

As if on cue, Penelope stirs, her fingers tightening around his. Spencer’s attention refocuses rapidly, waiting, watching as her eyes track back and forth beneath her eyelids before they crack open, squinting against the bright hospital lights.

“ _Spencer_ —?” Derek and Emily look like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he remembers, _They had to sedate her. A few times_. He wants to protect her from it all.

“Yeah— yeah, Garcia, I’m here.” He can see tears welling up in her eyes and before he can say anything they spill over.

“I’m alive? You’re alive? We’re— we’re alive?” Her voice is tenuous.

“Apparently we’re luckier than we thought.” He’s giving her this wry smile that Emily and Derek don’t recognize, it looks wrong on his features, but Penelope doesn’t seem bothered.

“Now I wouldn’t go that far, handsome.”

Spencer laughs. It’s small and broken but it’s not the protest he’d given to _pretty boy_ , it’s not the closed off _I’m fine_ , it’s something different. It’s like Spencer has stepped into this calm, confident role in front of her, and it seems too familiar for Derek’s and Emily’s comfort.

Then, she smiles, and Spencer thinks it’s the first real smile he’s seen from her in a long time, as her eyes land upon the bright toy in Emily’s arms. “Is that for me?” She gasps out, and Emily nods, smiling too, and places it into Penelope’s lap.

“Oh, he’s perfect. Thank you.” She’s running her hands over its soft fur and Spencer just lets out a breath, quiet, to himself, to see a moment of soft, uncertain joy take hold of her.

“I’m going to name him Gerald.”

*******

Penelope had gone on like that, no sedative, calmed just by the weight of Gerald and Spencer at her side. But mealtime was coming around and nurses would be checking in and their undercover operation needed to come to a halt.

“Bring my boy wonder back to me,” Penelope says seriously as Emily wheels him away, Derek staying behind by her bedside.

“You got it, Penny.”

They sit in the quiet of his room now, a tray of food spread out before him. It’s not much. Broth. Toast. Jello. He knows the logic— he hasn’t had a consistent meal since he’d been taken, his stomach isn’t ready to dive into anything substantial, but all he can do is stare down at it in near disgust. It doesn’t escape Emily.

“C’mon, not even Jello?”

He pokes at it with his fork, watching the artificial red gelatin wiggle in its container.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Spencer—”

“I want coffee.”

She freezes, eyes widening. “I’m, uh— not sure that’s such a great idea, Spence.”

He frowns, brows furrowing. She lets out a near echoing sigh.

“I’ll tell you what— you eat that Jello and I’ll pull some strings and get you some coffee. _Decaf_. Got it?”

His mouth contorts a bit at _decaf_ because it’s just another piece of normalcy that’s been stolen from him but he nods anyways, figuring it’s the best he’ll get.

Emily focuses her attention at the files in her lap, trying to give him space while he eats, slowly, she’s never seen him eat so _slowly_.

He’s halfway done when he pushes the cup away from himself.

“I don’t want the coffee anymore.”

“You don’t— _what_?” Like he’s speaking a foreign language.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Spence—”

He picks at a loose thread in his blanket. His stomach is turning. Lurching. Like it hates having food in it now which seems like some sick, twisted, cruel joke since there have been times throughout the past four months where his entire thought processes had been consumed by Rossi’s spaghetti or those frosted donuts with sprinkles from his favorite café or that Indian restaurant he’d always suggest for BAU dinners out.

He wonders how much is psychosomatic.

“ _Spence_.”

His gaze lifts up to hers reluctantly. She’s putting down the file, leaning forwards with her hands clasped in front of her, and he knows what’s coming.

“You’ve done this enough times to know, somewhere up in that big, genius brain of yours, that you can’t shut us out. I _know_ you know that.”

He almost glares. Almost. But he can’t quite get it to sit right on his features.

“What do you want to hear, Emily?” He forces the words out because they don’t feel right and they’re too quiet. “That I can barely count on two hands how often we got food in those four months? That we’d go weeks sometimes with only water? That by the end I felt so weak that I couldn’t even stand while they _beat_ me?”

Her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. Then a certain resolve takes over. “If that’s what you need to say, then yes.”

“I don’t _need_ to say anything.”

“Do you remember after prison?”

He almost jumps at those words. He doesn’t need reminded about all the times he’s been locked away. He drops his eyes to the scratchy hospital blanket stretched over him and busies himself with picking at those few threads coming undone.

He doesn’t say anything.

She can tell she said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry, Spence. But you’re going to need to talk eventually. And we’ll all be here when you do.”


	3. know i'll keep movin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spencer's not doing very well.  
> But he's sure trying to pretend he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seems like a bit more of a filler-ish chapter, but I really just wanted to flesh out Spencer's mental state and thought processes before things go... Well, _you know_.

_She’d seemed so broken._

_Just broken in pieces. She doesn’t anymore. Now it’s like she’s healed over but she’s healed over harder and in all the wrong places._

_In Japanese culture, there is something called Kintsugi. Artists will take broken pottery and fill in those new, shattered pieces with gold until they are held together again. The end result is beautiful, shining rivers of gold running tracks through once flawless material. Truthfully, it is more beautiful that way, more beautiful than when it was whole, with these delicate, snaking trails flowing through places that were once shattered and ugly._

_This is like that, but it is not beautiful. It is not gold. It is more like this terrible obsidian has healed over in all of her broken places. It is dark, it is not delicate, it will never be displayed in a museum. It is only suffering._

_He wants to fill in her broken parts with gold._

_When he first realizes who she has become, he cries while she sleeps._

_She had just been beaten only there weren’t the loud, terrified, earth shattering sobs he’s used to. On paper that might sound like an improvement, it might sound like a relief, but in practice it only means that she’s grown so accustomed to pain that she no longer flinches. He wants to burn down the world, he wants to burn down this basement, he wants to burn himself along with it. He wants to revel in the flames._

_He is used to feeling like Death in his own skin. He’d abandoned that hopeful, naïve, perfect innocence long, long ago. He’s used to his soul being dead. He hadn’t been alive in prison. Not really. It had been three months of Death. He has become Death._

_If he was Death, dark, dark Death, she was always the light. She’d send him letters and puzzles he could never have because they were useless, anyways, pencils were contraband, his life was full of contraband._

_It hurts him that he can’t give her the light. It hurts him that her own has faded._

_So he cries, quiet, broken tears, until he cries himself out._

_Then, he pulls his knees to his chest and gives in._

_He is nothing, he is Death._

_And this time, he’d dragged her down to the River Styx with him._

*******

He sits uncomfortably in his bed, hands clenching and unclenching.

The hospital psychologist sits in a chair she’d pulled up to the foot of his bed, scribbling notes onto a clipboard. _Dr. Harris_ , she’d said. She seems nice enough.

But he resents her.

“Mr. Reid—”

“Dr. Reid.”

“Dr. Reid,” she corrects, seeming unbothered, “In order to accurately gauge your mental status, I need you to be _honest_ with me. And if you’re not honest with me, you’re going to be here a whole lot _longer_ than you need to be.”

He presses his lips together into a line.

“Why don’t we start with how you’re feeling?”

He almost laughs. “I feel like I was just held prisoner in a basement for four months.”

“And how does that feel?”

His brow furrows. He almost sighs in frustration. “It feels like everyone is waiting for me to break.”

She nods. Sympathetically, he thinks. “You’ve been through an unbelievable amount of trauma. Not just in the past four months. Your psychological history here—”

“I know what it looks like.”

“What does it look like, Dr. Reid?”

“It looks like I’m already broken.”

“I don’t think it looks like that at all. I think it looks like you’ve experienced incredible pain in your life, and you need an outlet.”

“I’ve been in therapy before. After prison. I have a degree in psychology. I’m well-versed in coping mechanisms.”

“It’s not just about coping mechanisms. You need to _talk about it_.”

This time, he does sigh in frustration. He doesn’t respond.

She keeps going. “Why don’t we start simple. Tell me what happened in the beginning.”

“I told her to shoot me.”

The psychologist’s brows raise up. Surprised. She waits for him to continue.

“I’ve been through enough that I don’t fear death anymore. I’ve been hurt enough that I know how to survive through it. And I knew if I did what she said, if I dropped my weapon, it would be Hell again. I saw what they’d done to Quinn.”

She scrawls something into her notes. “But you’re not suicidal?”

He gives a low, dark laugh. “No. I’m just tired of it.”

“But then you saw— Penelope?”

He nods. “I knew then I had to give in. I couldn’t let them kill her.”

“So you’re a protector.”

His nose scrunches. “I knew she didn’t deserve it.”

“But you did?”

“What happens to me doesn’t matter anymore.”

She nods like she understands, scrawls another note. It drives him crazy.

“And what happened to you?”

“Torture,” he says simply, detachedly.

“Was there a time you can pinpoint as your lowest?”

“When they were hurting her.”

This time, it’s her lips that press into a line. She puts the clipboard down.

“Dr. Reid— Penelope wasn’t the only one who suffered.”

Spencer’s hands clench until they’re white knuckled. He stares ahead past her blankly. _It doesn’t matter_ , he thinks. _It doesn’t matter_.

“I know how to deal with suffering. Penelope has sat guarded behind computers for the majority of her career. You have my file. I have not.”

“No,” she says, “You have not.”

Spencer’s eyebrows draw together. “If you have my file, you are very aware of all that I have survived. You should know what I can handle. And if you know what I can handle, then you should understand that my priority was keeping my friend safe.”

“But you couldn’t keep her safe.”

Spencer’s breath stutters. A hand tangles in his white blanket. The gaze that he settles upon her drips with malice. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that her suffering does not negate your suffering, nor vice versa.”

He breathes out through gritted teeth. “Are we done here?”

Dr. Harris sighs. “Dr. Reid. As a person well acquainted with psychological protocols, you should understand that I cannot give you the green light for release until I am satisfied you can care for yourself.”

He tenses. “I can care for myself.”

“If you don’t acknowledge what has happened in the last four months—”

“I’m fine.”

She looks at him pointedly. “Dr. Reid—” she sighs, “While I find your mindset concerning, I cannot see a reason you pose a danger to yourself or others. However, I do not believe you should be alone right now, and I am putting in a recommendation that you be released into the care of a loved one., I cannot clear you to begin the consideration process for your return to the field, and you will have to follow up further upon your discharge with a mental health professional.”

There is fire in Spencer’s eyes, but his next words don’t come from Spencer.

They come from the River Styx.

“For the past four months,” he nearly hisses, “I have lost _everything_. All I want is my _life_ back and all _any of you_ care about is waiting— waiting for me to _break down_ so I can heal according to your textbook timeline. I’m not a _statistic_. All of my life, I have been a _statistical outlier_ , and I can promise you that what I need is my _life back_.”

He’s struck by how different he sounds.

Once, he was gentle.

Her brows are raised. “Would you like to talk about that?”

Anger flares out inside of him. “No. I’m done talking.”

*******

**_I’m done talking, I’m done talking, I’m done talking_ ** _._

_Sometimes, Penelope had begged him to talk. Usually in those days where they’d be briefly abandoned, lulled into some false sense of security. In those days before she’d hardened._

_“Please, Spencer, you have to feel something. You can talk to me.”_

_He just stares at her, but not really. Kind of through her. “I’m okay, Penny. Really.”_

_“How are you okay?” She’s nearly sobbing and his heart is hurting._

_“I’ve been through a lot.”_

_“How doesn’t that make things worse?”_

_He doesn’t respond for a second, because it kind of does. He just shakes his head._

_Then he lies, “Because I know how to survive, and I’ve been through worse.”_

**_No, he hasn’t_ ** _._

**_This is the worst_ ** _._

_“You can’t be brave all the time.”_

_“I’m not brave,” he says, cracking a smile that cuts right through her, “I’m just used to it. I’m okay.”_

_“You’re pretending for me, I told you not to pretend for me.”_

_There are tears rolling down her cheeks now, he can see her eyes swimming in them._

_“I’m not pretending, Garcia. I’d be this way even without you here.” That’s not a lie. Not really. He’s pretty numb either way._

_“Spencer, please.”_

_It feels like there are knives stabbing through his heart._

_But he’s closing off, shutting down._

_He deflects, but his tone is still kind, careful to handle her sharp edges and fragile pieces. “You need to worry about what you’re feeling. Not me. Okay? You have enough going on up there without worrying about me.”_

_“I’m scared,” she says, “I’m really, really scared. How are you not scared?”_

_“I’ve been to prison, Penelope. I know how to be deprived.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Why are you sorry?”_

_“You shouldn’t be here.”_

_“Neither should you.”_

_“I know,” she sniffles, “But you’ve been through too much.”_

_He hesitates and turns away. No, he’s_ definitely _closing off._

_Maybe he has been through too much, but he thinks that doesn’t matter, he thinks really it might as well be him now, shouldn’t it? Yes, it should be him. He thinks it might as well be him and he doesn’t quite understand why she doesn’t see it, because adding another tally onto his, “Terrible Things,” roster doesn’t really matter much anymore, it’s just another mark, it’s just another scar to rip into his gears-always-turning brain, and the claws may sting but they don’t burn like they used to. They just fall almost numb against his skin._

_He doesn’t know if there’s a God, not after Hankel, but if there is they seem to have some pretty grand ideas on what Spencer Reid can handle, don’t they? Spencer thinks they overestimate him, but maybe they don’t, maybe they stack the world upon his shoulders like Atlas being crushed by the sky because while he wobbles under the weight he’s too damn stubborn to drop it. If he drops it, others get hurt._

_He’s been trying not to drop it since his father left, when he’d carry its weight for his mother. It’s only gotten heavier since then. Whatever God is piling it on him, they may be right that he’s stubborn, but one day he will crack under it, smashed to pieces, flattened and empty pieces._

_Actually, if there’s a God, they’re pretty cruel. Maybe more like the Old Testament God. Or maybe ~~Tobias~~ Charles Hankel had been right, and he really is a sinner, and there’s no god helping him at all. There are just demons waiting to pull him down. _

_They’re doing a pretty good job at it, anyways._

_Either way, he doesn’t have it in him to cry for himself anymore. He can count on one hand, on less than one hand, just a few fingers, how many times he’d allowed himself to crack open at Milburn, always in the dead of night, always silent, tears staining his cheeks._

_Maybe there’s only so much he can take. But even when he finally breaks at least it won’t be his family that’s shredded like paper into the wind. It’ll be his own soul torn apart and that may be better. He can take more if he has no soul._

_No, even when he breaks he doesn’t really break and he does it in this spectacular and terrible way neither Penelope nor he recognize. He doesn’t break, he crumbles down inside of himself in this way that’s horrifying for anyone who knows Spencer Reid._

_Either way, gods and demons both know someone has to suffer. The world is a dark place and he’s seen it up close. The world is dark and someone is always suffering, and really, it might as well be him._

_He’d rather it be him._

_He’s not really used to it being anyone else._

_Maybe that’s why Penelope being here is really the only thing tearing him apart._

_The rest of him is just this numbed-out shell putting on a confident smile because that’s easier to explain than the blank slate he is inside, waiting for more trauma to fill the core of him up like chalk scrawling the world’s hatred out in terribly sloppy script inside him._

_“I’ll survive,” and then, softly, an afterthought, “I always do.”_

A medical doctor, this time, stands to the side of the room, flipping through his chart. Spencer itches to read what’s written there.

“Dr. Reid, you are severely malnourished, and my nurses tell me you haven’t been eating.”

He rolls his lower lip between his teeth. “I’m not very hungry.”

The doctor, Dr. Moore, nods. “That’s fairly normal, considering the past four months. Your stomach isn’t accustomed to consistent meals. However, as a condition of your release, I’m going to need you eating on a regular basis.”

Spencer just nods, leaning back in his upright bed, tired.

“Physically, you’re healing well. Your knee will need rest, you can expect to be on crutches for a significant portion of time, and while you will likely not recover full range of motion, I expect a decent recovery.”

He nods again, staring down at his hands. “When can I go home?”

“According to my records, you will be released into the care of Emily Prentiss.”

Spencer flinches. “I’m just going to stay with her.”

“Of course. I’d say by the end of the week, should you continue doing well and begin your recommended diet.”

He gives a slow nod of his battered head. “Okay.”

“Dr. Reid,” his name like that makes his head raise, “I hear you’ve been— closed off.”

Spencer very nearly rolls his eyes. “My physical state is more concerning than my mental state, I can assure you.”

Dr. Moore purses his lips in a manner Spencer is growing very used to. “Mental and physical health go hand and hand. My recommendation is you focus on both types of healing.”

And then he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who is reading and leaving kudos and nice comments! Like I said, I have never done anything like this before, so the fact that at least some people are enjoying it makes me so happy.
> 
> On a plot-y note, there's another part that's really important to Spencer's mental health that on one hand I wanted to include here, but on another it fits somewhere else a lot better. So it's just vaguely referenced.


	4. catch me, i'm falling for good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can really only be strong for so long, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some light triggers here, mostly implied suicidal thoughts that aren't so much suicidal thoughts as much as _accepting your own death and maybe hoping for it_ thoughts. So beware of that.

“Where’s the rest of the team?” He asks, eyes traveling up to meet Emily’s.

She hesitates. “They all want to see you,” she begins, “We just— weren’t sure flooding you with attention would be the best idea.”

Spencer nods and thinks he’s grateful for that. The idea of all those eyes on him, watching him, even if they’re the eyes of the people he loves most, makes him want to dissolve into a pile of nothingness. He is not ready for the eyes. He’s not really ready for any eyes. He’s still all these sharp edges and he wants to be softer and smoother before they see him again.

He lets silence fall over them like a heavy fog.

“Spence—” She begins, and reluctantly, his eyes raise again. “They missed you. We all did.”

His heart thuds, _pound, pound, pound_. He doesn’t want this conversation.

He doesn’t want the heart-to-heart. Maybe that’s unusual. But he’s teetering dangerously close to this edge and he has been ever since he’d entered these hospital walls and he fears a _heart-to-heart_ maybe open his heart and open the gates holding the flood back, too.

He can feel it beginning to creep into him. He can feel the claws starting to scrape down his spine. It sends a chill through his body, physical, a soft tremble that runs under his skin.

He wants to run. He feels as trapped here in this hospital bed as he had in that basement with a chain shackled to his ankle. If he tries he can still hear it rattling with his every movement. If he tries he can still feel zipties digging into his pale skin, leaving angry red lines where he’d struggled against the binds. After awhile he’d stopped struggling, though, and just let them sink into his flesh.

He doesn’t want to stop struggling now. The binds that hold the broken pieces of his mind together are tight, but they’re coming undone. They are zipties, but all those zipties had been cut, and these are the last remainder of his captivity and somehow all that is holding him so very precariously together.

 _Why, why, why, why, why_ —

Why are tears stinging his eyes.

He wants to rip his tear ducts out and let the blood flow because it’s better than letting those watery trails drip down his cheeks.

 _Why, why, why, why, why_ —

The better question is why this happened to him at all. **_Confess your sins_** — had it been his sins? No, that’s not right, Penelope is innocent. Maybe Penelope was part of his punishment. Maybe he truly had dragged her down with him. Maybe it was all his fault. He’d believe it, he is some toxic, poisonous force.

He is bleach and ammonia dripping into soft white powder, steaming fumes into the air that choke whoever inhales them.

He is toxic fumes.

“We never gave up. We _were_ going to bring you home. No matter what.”

 _Home, home, bring him home_. Bring him home in a body bag, bring him home bloated and rotting, bring him home as a white or maybe a suffocated blue corpse.

“But you thought we’d be dead.” His tone is matter-of-fact. Detached.

“Spencer, no—”

There are tears stinging his eyes. _No, no, no, no_.

He is frozen, trying to blink them back.

He has no reason to cry, does he? He’s spent the past four months with a wealth of knowledge stored in his brain on abduction, victims, his likelihood of dying and the impossibility that he still hadn’t. Emily can say she and the team had kept hope alive but he knows, he has always known, that somewhere, deep in the back of their skulls, was the terrible knowledge that he and Penelope were likely dead.

He can feel Emily’s stare boring into him.

They are eyes, they are eyes, they are eyes, they are looking at his ragged edges, they are seeing through him, they are watching the low vibration ricocheting through his nerves, they are watching him, he wants to crumble on the floor, he wants to hide under his blanket, he wants to be whole, he wants to be whole, he does not want to be dark and twisted under his skin and inside of his skull.

His body will not stop the soft shaking. He is trying to get it to. He is squeezing his eyes shut and breathing in deep breaths and feeling his hands fist in the white sheet draped over him like he is a corpse after all, like he is dead, like he is dead on a slab of metal in a morgue.

Trembling, shaking, vibrations through his skin.

_Penelope’s voice is terrified. Soft and wavering and terrified. “Spencer?”_

_She’s never seen him like this before. In the months they’ve been here—_

_He lies in this broken, delicate pile on the concrete, shivering against the cold, his head and hair soaked through, leaving a puddle on the ground. His eyes are squeezed shut but she can see tears rolling down his cheeks. “I’m not weak, I’m not weak, I’m not weak …”_

_Those words roll past his lips, shaky, hoarse, he’s not there, not really. “Spencer, please—”_

_He only shakes a bit more violently in response. She gathers up both of their blankets, tucks them around him, desperate for some change in this terrifying, empty, chanting shell._

_He doesn’t even respond. “I’m not weak, I’m not weak, I’m not weak …”_

_“No, no, my sweet boy wonder, you’re not weak.”_

_He doesn’t hear. Or if he does he gives no indication. He just shivers, she’s worried for hypothermia. His skin is pale and clammy, he always looks so dangerously thin but right now he’s just a lump of skin and bones._

_“Hey, Spencer—” She reaches out a hand, tries to lead his head into her lap._

His brain is swirling, swirling, toxic, poison. Fumes, toxic fumes.

First he’s on the floor, shaking, then a punch is rattling his ribcage, then a face is sneering down at him except it looks inhuman, wrong, then Penelope’s sobs are in his ears, then they’re not anymore, and her gaze is blank, and then she’s a pile on the floor and he can see her chest is still, and then he’s staring down the barrel of the gun and it is _click, click, clicking_ through chambers, only Hankel doesn’t hold it, this face that’s morphing through every tormenter is—

His gaze is far-off, his body is vibrating. Emily can tell something is very, very wrong.

A bullet flies clean through his skull.

 **And then he screams**.

The past has him hostage in his own brain.

Emily startles, startles intensely, her eyes wide. “Spencer—”

He’s thrashing, limbs wild, not registering pain, just cold, icy panic.

“I’m not weak, I’m not weak, I’m not w—"

“Spencer— Spence— **_Reid_**.”

He jumps, eyes wild like a caged animal’s, his chest falling up and down. His heart monitor is beeping, loudly, terrifyingly fast beeping. Tears are rolling down his cheeks and falling in puddles on the blanket in his lap. He’s shaking.

They’ve been waiting for this.

The façade, the walls, so carefully constructed, are crashing down in this sudden, fantastic display of four months of Hell catching up to him.

“Spencer— hey, listen to me. Listen to my voice. You need to breathe. If you don’t breathe, they’re going to come and sedate you. Okay? Breathe.”

He hears her through a distant, echoing buzz in his ears. He tries. In, out, in, out.

Soft, broken sobs escape him, but the panic is dying. It’s just leaving this tragic pain in its place, and Emily doesn’t entirely know what to do with it.

“Spence—”

“I should be dead.”

“Spencer, no—”

“How am I not dead?”

His voice is wavering and quiet and she almost doesn’t understand around the wildly shaking, fluctuating tones. It occurs to Emily that she does not know this Spencer, this Spencer that is more like a shell of Spencer. He used to be closed-off. He used to hide things. He used to lie, at times, and that had gotten him thrown in prison at worst.

But he’d been getting better.

He’d promised JJ _no more secrets_.

He is filled to the brim with secrets.

Emily doesn’t really recognize him, but he is also still that same Spencer Reid buried under layers and layers of fear and the constant threat of death. And she loves him all the same, and she knows she and lots, lots of others can put Spencer back into the shell of his body.

He just has to let them help.

“You’re not real. I know you’re not real. None of this is real.”

“No, it’s real. It’s real, Spence. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

“They’re going to come back.”

“No, they’re not. We got them. We got Merva.”

“I don’t know why this keeps happening.”

That’s it. That breaks her heart. Tears sting her eyes. “I don’t know either, Spencer.”

“I’m not strong enough.”

“Yes, you are. You’re the strongest person I know.”

He shakes his head. Violently. “I begged. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt.”

“Spence, anyone would have—”

“The water just kept coming. They wouldn’t stop. I didn’t think it would ever stop.”

“The water—?” It makes sense, then. That wheeze she hears in his lungs. The damage on his chart. Her heart stops and shudders as she imagines his chest filling up with fire-like liquid, his body struggling for breath, gasps and droplets of that cool liquid torture flying from his lips.

“It was dark. There was nothing. It was all just nothing.” He’s shaking, violently.

She doesn’t know what that means. She’s not sure she wants to.

“Spencer, I need you to breathe—” It seems to go through one ear and out the other.

“They hurt her, they hurt her, I tried, I—”

“Spence, _breathe_.”

“I think maybe I’m broken.”

“Spencer—”

His breaths are still shallow, but his voice is steadier.

“I don’t know if I can pretend anymore.”

_They are one hundred and twenty-nine days in. He knows. He counts. He has nothing to scratch into the wall with, like in prison, no way to have some physical, grounding reminder, but he doesn’t really need one. He never forgets._

_Penelope never asks how many days, and he’s glad. He thinks it might hurt her worse to know than to have all those days that have passed be one consistent blur of pain._

_They are one hundred and twenty-nine days in._

_They are eight days from freedom._

_They have no way of knowing that, of course._

_He’s lost hope, really. He thinks she might have too, but he still tries to push that aside and keep it alive in her, because she is Penelope Garcia, she is hopeful, unrelenting sunshine, and the idea of her losing that makes him want to bang his head against the wall until he is nothing but a red, squishy pulp._

_He kind of wants to do that anyways._

_They’ve started playing this game, The Believers, because they’re bored. Bring them just enough food for one person, just enough water for one person. And every time, he tries to give it to her._

_“Spencer, you’re going to die if you don’t take it,” she whispers to him in this broken, ragged voice. There’s a part of him that doesn’t really care, and that scares him. There’s a part of him that’s only alive because he feels like he’s keeping her alive._

_A pretty big part, he thinks._

_So he takes it, sometimes, and others just leaves it there in the center of them for hours when she wants him to take it, waiting, at a stalemate. Usually, after a few hours, she gives in and takes it for herself, because it’s obvious he won’t and it’s not like she can shove it down his throat._

_He starts to take more of the beatings again, too, and Penelope lets him, she has to, because she remembers that time he’d tried to stop them from hurting her and he’d wound up with a shattered knee, later shivering and dripping wet and crying on the cold concrete._

_Penelope is scared because she thinks Spencer is self-destructing in a way she hasn’t seen since Hankel._

_Penelope is even more scared when Spencer antagonizes them and then she doesn’t even think, she_ knows _he is self-destructing._

_They drag him away and he comes back battered and broken, days later (seventy-six hours later, to be exact, and Spencer is exact, Spencer had felt every hour, every minute, every second), and he won’t tell her where he’s been. He won’t tell her what happened._

_Five days before freedom he returns to her and he knows he will not survive._

_He seems stronger, then, like a renewed sense of hope, except it’s not, it’s just that he wants to leave Penelope with some surviving chance, some image of him fighting to hold onto._

_She can hear him wheezing beside her, as quiet as he tries to be. Giving these rattling coughs. And Penelope hates it, she hates how he tries to pretend to be okay._

**_He_** _**just keeps pretending to be okay**. The one time she’d seen him break down, the one time she’d seen his walls fall down, crumble spectacularly, well-constructed stones and plaster simply giving in and turning to dust, he’d finally just fallen asleep (or maybe fallen unconscious, it had been so sudden, like the lights in him had rapidly flickered out and gave way to the dark) like the pain was too much to bear. When he woke he’d pretended nothing had happened. He’d asked _her _if_ she _was okay._

_And as the days go by it just gets worse, and he just acts stronger, and she doesn’t know._

_She wants to shake him. She wants to make him stop when he gives her those smiles and tells her confidently that the team will never stop looking for them. That she just has to hold on. She hates it, she hates it with everything in her._

_She also hates that in spite of her best efforts she selfishly thinks it_ is _better than watching him dissolve into tears, shaking on the ground. She thinks it’s so, so selfish. It’s selfish that he’s right in that stupid genius brain of his and that seeing him break would break her even worse._

_She proves him right every time she lets one of those stupid smiles comfort her._

_But Spencer is shattered, deep, deep inside. Like prison but worse._

_They’d dragged him in unconscious, roughly, chained him up and left, and for a second Penelope had wondered in terror if he was dead and they’d brought her his body as some sort of cruel joke._

_But his chest is rising, falling, although he sounds sick. She brushes the matted hair from his face and feels it’s damp again, puts his head in her lap and tries to brush her fingers through the tangles in his beautiful brown curls._

_“— Mom?” He’s still unconscious, or mostly, maybe delirious, but he’s talking._

_“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay.”_

_He just does this low hum. “’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry—”_

_Penelope doesn’t know what to say to that. She wants to cry but the tears won’t come._

_Hours later, he groans awake, head still in her lap, and she can see for a moment this peace in his features, this calm. Then he turns his head and sees the unforgiving concrete walls surrounding them and it’s gone, and suddenly, his peace turns into a ghostly haunting._

**_It’s an emergency_** , they’d said, as Emily had eventually hit the _nurse call_ button and demanded in a rather official capacity that his psychologist be brought in. He doesn’t want her to be. He’s tired and he just wants to curl up in bed and be broken like he’s accepted he is.

But she comes, her blonde hair swept up in a messy bun, with that damn clipboard again, and drags a chair to his bedside.

“What’s going on, Dr. Reid?”

He almost winces.

“Spencer?”

“I don’t know,” he mutters, averting his gaze.

“Okay, how are you feeling?”

“Fucked up.”

Her eyebrows raise at that, but she doesn’t look surprised, just questioning. Nobody would expect those words from the well-spoken, three PhDs, skin and bones genius.

“How so?”

“I don’t know.” She waits, waits, waits. “I don’t think I can be fixed this time.”

“Have you ever considered that you’re not broken?”

He squints his eyes at her, nose scrunching. “I thought that was what all of you wanted me to do. Admit I’m broken.”

“People don’t break, Dr. Reid. You’re not porcelain. You have trauma. But the thing about trauma is that it can be worked through. Nobody is _broken_.”

He looks sideways at her like he doesn’t quite believe her.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must be thinking about something, Spencer.”

He lets a pause hang in the air.

“I was tired. It looked like I was fighting them. But I think I was really just trying to end it.”

“End it?”

“I didn’t want to be in that basement anymore.”

She nods, catching onto the subtext. “I thought you weren’t suicidal.”

He makes a face, like he’s just heard nails on a chalkboard. “I’m not. But it was starting to seem like that might be my only way out.”

She nods again, slowly. “You didn’t think your friends would find you.”

He shakes his head. “No, I did. I just thought they’d be too late.”

“But they weren’t, Spencer.”

“I think they might have been.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re never going to let me back in the field. I was lucky they did after prison. The FBI isn’t just my home. It was my life. The BAU. But it’s gone.”

“That doesn’t mean they were too late. You can still have a life.”

“I didn’t plead guilty because I’d be a convicted felon. Because I would lose any chance of ever getting my job back. It would have been smarter than rolling the dice, but I didn’t want a life without the FBI. It seemed pointless.”

“So you feel like your life’s been stolen from you.”

His lips quirk up like it’s funny. “You could say that.”

“It hasn’t been. Dr. Reid, you have a new chance.”

“I shouldn’t have ever lost my old chance.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But life throws us curveballs sometimes.”

His nose scrunches again, tears burning behind his eyelids. Curveballs. That seems like an understatement. The understatement of the century. “My life has been nothing but curveballs.”

“Spencer, I need you to understand that your life isn’t over. You aren’t broken. You’re traumatized. Now, I’m going to put in a referral for you to one of my colleagues. She specializes in Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’m sure you know that in order for a diagnosis of PTSD to occur, symptoms must be present for at least a month—”

She looks at him, waiting for confirmation he’s following along. He nods numbly.

“But considering all the other trauma you have experienced in your life, I feel confident in diagnosing you here and now. Your chart says you have experienced this before.”

He nods again. “Just PTSD.”

“Hm?”

“It was just PTSD. Not C-PTSD. The C is new.”

She looks at him, sympathy dancing behind her hazel eyes.

“I don’t think it’s all that new, Spencer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was intensely painful to write, but Spencer is definitely suffering, and had to fall apart eventually.
> 
> Again, thanks for the support, all!


	5. this house don't feel like home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning home, or to Emily's home, really isn't the end. For Spencer or Penelope.

“Hey, Spence,” There’s an air of cheer to Emily’s voice as she enters his room. He’s sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, clothes hanging loosely off his body. _His clothes_. Except they don’t fit right anymore. He tries not to think too hard about that.

He looks up, quiet, rubbing the back of his hand where an IV port had rested for the past two weeks, filling his insides up with the hydration, vitamins, nutrients he’d been so, so terribly deficient in, so utterly deprived of. He’d been deficient in too much, deprived of too much. It’s just another wonder in how he is still breathing. “Hi.”

“Guess what I brought?”

He raises his eyebrows, then looks. In her hand is a to-go Styrofoam cup, a cardboard holder strapped around its middle. He smiles. It’s small but it makes Emily’s heart soar.

She puts it in his hands and he can smell that sweet but bitter scent that’s so familiar but has been so far away. He puts it to his lips and barely minds that it almost burns his tongue. His eyes drift shut, savoring it.

“C’mon, let’s get you out of here, yeah?”

There’s a wheelchair to drag his still-broken body out of the hospital in, which he protests to because he’s been on crutches before and he’ll have to be again soon, anyways, but Emily is insistent, so he lets her push him down the fluorescent-colored hallways, through the front doors, and out into the cool fall air. He almost cries and he doesn’t quite understand why. It is beautiful and it is horrifying, all at once, how incredibly big the world truly is.

His world has been small, claustrophobic, cramped, unbearable. Grey.

The ride back is uneventful because he’s silent, just watching the world zoom past in these bright, foreign colors. Houses, businesses, trees, gardens— it almost takes his breath away, this world that’s been locked away.

No. _He’s_ been locked away.

Emily’s house is nice, familiar, but strange. She already has some of his belongings, his old belongings, things picked apart from the apartment he has yet to set foot in, scattered around in her guest room. She’s put out more than he’d expected; some of his books on the side table, pictures of him and his mother and the team, pieces of home he hasn’t seen in months.

It all seems like it’s from another world.

It all seems like it’s from an another universe altogether, a universe set before his world had so abruptly shattered. When he looks at the photos held in wooden frames they don’t seem like him at all. The man there is a stranger, a stranger who was much more whole than the man who stands before them now in tiny, insignificant, sharp and jagged pieces.

There are some of him before prison, even. There are some of him baby-faced and innocent. Some of the team back in his first year, when he’d still been shy and uncertain and small. He kind of wants to flip those over on their head, or throw them against the wall until they break. They aren’t him anymore. He’s not sure they ever were. He’s a duplicate. A much more broken duplicate. An alien from another planet that only knows how to suffer.

“I’ll leave you alone to settle in.”

He just nods, this overwhelmed feeling creeping under his skin. She leaves the door open, he notices. He doesn’t close it, but a large part of him hates it because he knows the reasons why. He is a danger. He is a hazard. He is contraband smuggled through beige brick walls.

He grabs a book and runs his fingers along the spine. He cracks it open and it smells like worn paper and he almost holds it to his nose to take it in.

He flips through the pages at first, marveling at the way they move under his fingertips. Even in prison, he’d had books to get lost in. He’d had new places to escape into, fantastical and beautiful in ways his wasn’t. In that basement there’d been nothing. There had been no escape. There had been no fantasy land. At first, he’d recite books in his head, occasionally out loud, just ones he had memorized. There were many he had memorized. Near every book he’d ever laid hands on, really. But eventually, that had died out, because it simply wasn’t the same, it didn’t turn the gears in his brain like flipping through the pages of a brand new book does, it just kept it on terrible loop, and he couldn’t take it.

Now, possessed— possessed by something oddly whole, something oddly smoothed around the edges, something that resembles his former self just for a breath of time— he reads, he reads, he reads, hands moving down pages like a ghost from the past. He is, suddenly, the _Old Spencer Reid_. He is full of facts and statistics and words, he is carrying a book in his leather bag wherever he goes, he is devouring novels in foreign and difficult languages on a jet that is roaring to life beneath him.

The feeling of that paper softly scraping against the point of his index finger as it travels so rapidly down lines of black text feels like some strange, intoxicating drug. It transports him elsewhere, it allows him to drift into this welcome abyss, allows him to enter this new world that’s better and less scary and less tattered than his own.

Later, when Emily pops her head in, she finds him curled up on his side, book open beside him, an arm draped over it like he is protecting it, like he is afraid it might disappear. He probably is. But he looks so peaceful there. He looks happy. It may be unconscious happiness, but it is something.

She smiles and leaves him to drift away.

*******

Spencer’s head rests, peacefully, in Penelope’s lap, as she cards her fingers through his brown curls and they sprawl out on Emily’s living room floor. They are not tangled anymore. They are once again clean, perfectly wild, beautiful and fluffy in a way she’d so missed. He looks more like himself, a little bit, although still a bit worn around the edges, still not quite right.

Penelope is beginning to look like herself, too, although she is still too angular. It’s not right. She’d been so soft, full of curves, and now her bones jut out in these terrible ways, now her bright clothes seem to fit loosely over her skin, not clinging in a perfectly put-together way reflecting the pure optimism she carried in her soul.

Maybe because she carries that pure optimism in her soul no longer.

Emily and Derek make idle conversation from the kitchen over mugs of coffee and try to pretend they are not listening in. It’s out of concern, but it is smothering, and Spencer is all too aware that they are doing it. They don’t hide it very well.

“Spencer?” Penelope’s voice is quiet in a way that makes him nervous. He knows something bad is coming. Or maybe not bad, but bad for him, because he still wants to be closed off, he still wants to lock his emotions away, the rapid breakdown he’d experienced within clean hospital walls had not been an indicator of the way he’d move forward but rather an exception to the rule, although the rule is wavering in a way he can’t help.

But he is stubborn, if nothing else.

“Hm?”

“What happened to you?”

He looks up at her, well-honed fake confusion drifting onto his features, as her hands still where they’d been brushing through his hair. He thinks he knows what she means, but he doesn’t really want to, and maybe if he plays dumb she’ll take back the words and change her mind. “You know what happened to me.”

She shakes her head vehemently. He is not the only stubborn genius in the room. “I don’t. When they took you away from me—”

He tenses, and he can feel Emily’s and Derek’s eyes on him now, too. Penelope’s tone has made a crescendo up into something higher than a whisper, something easily heard and no longer held in secret. He can feel the concern piercing into him from all angles.

He doesn’t want to talk about this.

In his head it is all black and it is silent. In his head he feels nothing but pain that is too familiar. In his head he is drowning in pure, empty, horrible nothingness.

He doesn’t want to be in his head anymore.

“Penelope, no.”

“Please, Spencer,” her eyes are shining with tears.

“It’ll make things worse.”

“It’s worse for me not knowing.”

“It’s not,” he murmurs, eyes slipping shut like he can tune out her and the flood of memories she threatens to bring to the surface. Why can’t she see this is too much? Why can’t _any of them_ see this is too much? He can only handle so much. He wants to put this all in a box in the newly made darkness locked in the back of his skull, tie it up in that box with a chain and forget it exists, eidetic memory be damned.

They won’t let him, they are determined to pull it out of him just like The Believers were determined to pull the life, the very life from his broken body down to his even more broken soul, out of him. He moves off her lap, abruptly, muscles tight and vibrating from the effort, shaking his head like he can dislodge the memories. It all falls into the palms of his hands as he runs his fingers through his hair, setting the strands on edge.

“Spence—” It’s Emily’s voice this time. He grits his teeth.

Some things he just wants to keep to himself.

He doesn’t get to do that much these days.

Penelope’s coping mechanism is wildly different from his own and right now, the difference is grating him. The need to talk things out, to project emotions into the air and feel them strongly, is not something he relates to. It is not something he wants to relate to. It is something he wants to avoid at all costs, but they all want him to _change_.

“They waterboarded me.”

That’s not a lie. It just hadn’t come until the end. After the nothingness.

It had kind of been preferable.

But it had been like being hit by a runaway train, too.

He doesn’t know why this one is tearing him apart, why this one is making his brain shudder in ways that are utterly foreign and completely unfamiliar to him. Maybe it’s that he had brought it on himself, he had asked for it, he had dug a hole for himself that was more like a black pit. Maybe it’s that saying it out loud is a confirmation that he’d made a mistake that has likely stolen away some of his own brain capacity— he knows statistics on that, too.

Deprivation. Isolation. Neurons misfiring, brain malfunctioning.

It has been well studied. Subjects, after hours, become unable to think in any coherency. The ability to count to a number any higher than thirty is impaired. It is impossible. Motor skills erode, so do basic skills— abstracting, generalizing, mathematical reasoning.

Hallucinations are not uncommon, pseudo-psychotic breaks.

All this happens within hours. By forty-eight hours, the effects are past torturous. They are at times irreversable. He was gone for seventy-six.

“You were gone for _days_ , Spencer. I worried myself sick.”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Penelope.”

Something inside of her _snaps_ , like a branch that’s been stepped on too many times, like a delicate flower someone had cracked at the stem, leaving it only to wilt and die.

“I want you to stop— _lying_ to me! That’s all you’ve done. You’ve _lied_. Those entire four months you’d done _nothing_ but lie to me. Like I couldn’t take it. And then you told me I was strong but you wouldn’t tell me _anything_ so I know that was a lie, too.”

He realizes she’s crying.

Spencer doesn’t know what to say.

Thick, uncomfortable silence hangs over the room.

_Silence. That’s all he knows. That and darkness._

_He cannot think. His thoughts swirl past him and die out too fast. He cannot grasp them, he cannott understand them, they fly and float away like some sick sort of balloon._

_He needs something. Anything. Time is creeping by and his brain is screaming mercilessly that it needs something to feel, it needs something new, anything, anything, anything. Breathing out in a way he can’t hear, he yanks a wrist against a restraint. A ziptie, perfectly placed, feeling it dig into his skin, beautifully painful. He twists, twists, it digs in further, he can feel it beginning to rip into his flesh, feel a warmth beginning to drip down his fingertips—_

_A sharp, stinging, hot pain jerks his head to the side violently. He thinks he cries out. He doesn’t know. He can’t know. Part of him relishes in it. The way it spreads its fingers across his skin, bruising. A hand tangles in his hair, his head jerking back. For a second, the pressure in his ear disappears, and he’s met with these gorgeous sounds of life in his eardrum. He thinks he might hear a television, even, and there’s this low buzz coming from some appliance, he thinks he hears birds outside. Tears nearly stain the fabric pulled so tightly over his eyes._

_Then he feels cool metal against his forehead._

_“Try it again,” he feels warm breath in his ear, “And I’ll pull the trigger before you know what hits you.”_

_He nearly cries at the irony, that he can’t even choose his own pain. They want him to hurt but not in his own way, not by his own hand, not how he wants to. **Do you think you have a choice?** No, he doesn’t. Not anymore. He has no choice, not even in when he’s breathing. Not when he’s hurting. Not when he’s starving. They choose when he’s full of desperate life as his soul is beaten out of him, they choose when he’s floating in some death-like abyss. Only he’s seen death, and it’s warm, and bright._

_This is not like death at all. This is a horrid, decrepit nothingness._

_He could probably beg them to kill him and they’d just keep him alive longer._

_Suspended somewhere between life and death._

_He almost thinks he’s in Limbo, but he knows that’s not true._

_He’s in some living Hell._

_He wonders what he did to deserve it. He can think of a few things._

**_Confess your sins_ ** _._

_~~I’m not a sinner~~ _ _._

**_Yes I am, I am, I am_ ** _._

_He definitely hears a bird, hears a sweet song. He wants to hold onto it._

_But then it’s silent again._

He still doesn’t speak.

Penelope is devolving. She is _rapidly_ devolving. Derek and Emily are both standing because she is letting out these panicked, shallow gasps like her lungs can’t get enough air (he understands that sickeningly well) and tears are running faster down her cheeks than should be possible and Spencer is just _staring_ because he’s too shocked to actually do anything, he’s too shocked to _help_ , he hasn’t heard those sounds from her in _months_ —

And _he’s_ the reason he’s hearing them again now. The guilt from that settles like a heavy stone in the center of his stomach, only it is sentient, it is not a stone, it is more a rabid animal that is trying to eat him from the inside out.

He can’t talk to her now any more than he could when they were locked away in a grey concrete box. He is not better. He is the same. He might as well have never left because he is just the same, the same empty, dead behind the eyes being that is not human, is something dark, is something just wrong, is something no person should ever lay eyes on.

He hates who he has become.

“Penelope—”

“You lied—”

“I didn’t lie—”

“You _did_.”

“Hey, Baby Girl, look at me,” Derek is inching in closer.

Her eyes are just wide, looking like two full moons obscured by a sky that is dripping with rain. He’d done the wrong thing. He can’t take it back now. He’d done the wrong thing. She’s hurting, he hurt her, he might as well have aimed a punch at her gut like _Death_ had thrown with a closed, hardened fist. _He’d done the wrong thing_.

“Spencer’s okay. See? He’s right there. He’s not goin’ anywhere.”

“He lied—”

“Look at him, Penelope. He’s alive. Does that seem like a lie to you?”

Spencer thinks he probably looks white as a corpse right now and might not be the best method of grounding her, but he lets it happen anyways, lets Morgan move in closer while he just sits with his back pressed to the couch and his knees drawn up to his chest, eyes losing focus, eyes going blank. The world is all blurring, anyways, into this mess of her sobs and the idea of perfectly inky darkness stuck in the faded edges of his beautiful but ever so abused grey matter. He feels an odd sensation like he’s not really in his body anymore, like he’s floating somewhere up in the air, a balloon let go to drift into the sky, picked up by the winds.

He just _floats, and floats, and floats_.

When Emily manages to pull him back down, Derek and Penelope are gone, and he is huddled in her bathroom with the contents of his stomach lost into her toilet and her behind him holding a cold and wet cloth to the back of his neck and he doesn’t remember getting there, he doesn’t remember any of it, his memory has failed him like Mexico, like heroin and cocaine and scopolamine in his system, only this time only the devastating and ugly parts of his own brain have blocked out the memories, and drugs do not suffice as an excuse.

*******

JJ looks happy, relieved, this placid smile on her lips. If he tries, Spencer kind of can mimic it, too. But a part of him isn’t sure it’ll ever be real again.

He bites into his donut, both reveling and drowning in its taste.

“You look good, Spence. A lot better.”

His eyebrows raise a bit, and he tries out that mimicking. “I feel better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He supposes he does, but he doesn’t think that’s much of an accomplishment. Before a few weeks ago, he’d spent four months of his life confined and tortured, so he’d definitely hope he’d feel better now that he’s free.

But a part of him isn’t free. It’s stuck there. Just like a part of him is stuck at Milburn, a part of him is dead with Maeve, a part of him was left on the floor of Tobias’ shed.

So many parts of him are missing now. He’s not sure how there’s any of him left.

“Emily says you’ve been going to therapy. Some … NA meetings?”

He makes a face. He can tell she was hesitant about that last part. But he nods.

“I’ve had some cravings.” He plucks at the sleeve of his sweater.

“That’s normal, Spence.”

His brows draw together. Is it? He doesn’t think normal really spells out _Dilaudid Addict_. But he lets it go. “I kind of just wish I could be alone sometimes.”

She bites her lip. “Emily’s set up her guest room?”

“Alone at my apartment,” he clarifies. That had surprised him, that he even still has an apartment. Apparently Rossi had been paying rent on his and Penelope’s both.

She nods. “It won’t be like this forever.”

He swallows and nods, too. “It was nice seeing Henry. And Michael. They seem so much … Bigger. Logically, their growth hasn’t exceeded a single inch since I’ve been gone. Four months isn’t overly substantial. But—”

“That’s normal, too, Spence,” she’s smiling again, “They missed you.”

“I missed them.” He runs his finger along the wooden ridges of the picnic table. “Where did you tell them we were?”

She looks shaken, for a moment, before she plasters on that placid look again. “I— I told them the bad guys got you, but we were going to get you back. I didn’t— I didn’t want them to think you’d … abandoned them.”

He winces a bit, but nods. “That’s good.”

She can tell something’s wrong. She’s quiet. “How do you really feel, Spence?”

He swallows, a thick lump in his throat. “Truthfully— I don’t really know.”

His therapist has been telling him to be more open.

The swirls of wood on the picnic table seem very interesting, though.

“Hey— that’s _okay_ ,” she says, and she reaches across the table to grab the hand he’s been trailing along the raised edges and dips. “You— you know you can talk to me, right?”

He furrows his brow, but his gaze follows her fingers laced through his up to her arm up to her face. “I know,” he says, “I just— don’t want to.”

He can tell he’s said the wrong thing when her face falls. He’s getting good at that. He thinks he’s lost some of the social cues he’d spent fourteen years perfecting.

“It’s— it’s not that, Jennifer, I just …” He pauses, trying to think. “I think it’s better if you don’t know. I know … I know you spend every day looking at crime scene photos and interviewing victims.” _I used to, too_ , he almost says. “But you don’t want to hear it when it’s about your friends. You think you do, but—” He looks down again, at those wooden patterns. “It’s bad, and— it would hurt you.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but she nods. “Well, if you ever change your mind—”

He smiles, sadly. “I know.”

*******

“Did you— did you think we were going to make it?”

Spencer looks at her with his brows drawn together. It’s the first time they’ve been alone, actually _alone_ , because Emily and Derek had conveniently went grocery shopping (he knows they’re just trying to give them space, _finally_ ) and they’re curled up on opposite ends of the couch because he still hasn’t really forgiven himself for what happened enough for him to allow himself to be comforted by her, in spite of the time and distance between now and then.

He just doesn’t understand. “Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know, I’ve just … Been wondering.”

She doesn’t sound like herself lately. No happy cheer. She doesn’t have as many clever quips or nicknames like she used to. It hurts his heart.

“I don’t know,” he says, looking away from her.

“Yes you do.”

“Penelope— what I thought doesn’t matter.”

“So you didn’t.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes.”

She looks at him like she’s trying to read him and she probably can. She’s not a profiler but he was her only friendly face for four months.

Really, he’s tired of all this being dragged out of him. He’s tired of Penelope, as much as he loves her, as much as he cares, as dependent as they both are, lingering on this and pulling these memories and twisted ideas out of him, like gas through a siphon pouring out of a dead car. He is the dead car, and she is the person desperately trying to save what little fuel remains within.

He has to remind himself, again, that this is how she copes. By talking. Putting her feelings into words. Without words and without feelings she is lost. He can’t help but feel guilty for not giving her that. Add that to the guilt of letting them hurt her— that’s a nice addition to add to the ever-growing weight he feels on his shoulders.

And after last time, he’s kind of afraid not giving in.

He sighs. “Statistically, our odds of survival were highly improbable. I knew that from the second we went over seventy-two hours. Every day that went by, the odds lowered. Near the end, I was getting tired. I wanted it to be over. I knew that even if we got free I’d have a Hell of a recovery considering the entirety of my life leading up to that point. I didn’t have hope for myself, but I still had some for you. You’ve been through less than I have. You still had the energy to hold on. I very nearly didn’t, and I knew that.”

“Spencer— …” He’s not looking at her. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You could have. You’re stronger than you think, and you’d be surprised what the human psyche can withstand. After my death, they would have left you alone. At least at first. Leaving you alone down there knowing I was dead would have hurt you more than any physical abuse, and they would have known that. You never antagonized them. You were never as fun to break.”

“You— thought about this?”

He breathes out, fast, through his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “I had to think about it. I knew it was going to happen eventually and I needed to know you’d be okay.”

There it is, there’s the truth. That he’d had his own death written in the stars. That he’d looked up at it sometimes to watch it shining in the night sky, or the only night sky they knew, a dark and empty slab of concrete stretching out like a menace over them. That looking up at it shining there was a comfort sometimes because he knew it meant he would not hurt anymore. Maybe he would see Maeve again, maybe Gideon was waiting, sometimes he felt like he could be that lucky, that he could be lucky enough to dance in the cloudy skies with the people he’d lost. That he could be lost, too, but lost in a beautiful, warm way, like wandering Las Vegas streets with no map, beautifully familiar and altogether new.

He can hear her sniffling.

He opens his eyes again, looks at her tiredly. “No offense, but I really don’t want to think about this.”

She nods, wiping up her tears before they can fall.

“Can we watch _Doctor Who_?” Her voice is wavering in ways that make his stomach clench. He nods and she reaches for the remote. The TV springs to life, a welcome distraction.

He watches, but he really doesn’t.

*******

Some nights, he wakes screaming, and the hallway lights flash on and his door slams open and Emily is there, concern twisting her features.

“I’m okay,” he always says, “I’m sorry.”

This time, he doesn’t.

There are tears rolling down his cheeks, soft gasps escaping his lips, he thinks he’s having a panic attack, but he’s a bit too preoccupied to analyze himself. He used to be able to do that, to think through the pain, the fear, but lately it’s like it has just encompassed him entirely.

He is not in a bedroom but rather an old and dusty basement. It is empty, it is wrong, it is ugly and terrible and he is stuck there. His soul is stuck there. They really had beaten it out of him there after all and he’d forgotten to pick it up from the floor as they’d loaded him onto a stretcher and shot a beautifully warm sedative into his veins.

Could you blame him? He’d been in such a hurry, after all.

Emily stands in the doorway, looking alarmed and like she doesn’t really know what to do with the man who is once again falling to pieces in front of her. “Spencer—?”

He only gulps in more air, his fists tightening in the blankets wrapped wildly around him.

“Hey, Spencer, okay, look at me— I’m going to help you sit up, and then you’re going to put your head between your knees and take some deep breaths for me. Okay?”

He shudders but thinks he nods, and he lets her.

The deep breaths hurt. It all hurts. When the panic slows, his face is red and splotchy and his eyes are puffy and his breathing sounds ragged, a low wheezing from his lungs that she knows isn’t just from a _panic attack_. She is his medical proxy, and the doctors had said as he floated in a sedated haze that the likelihood of permanent lung damage was present.

She can’t imagine how many times they had drowned him above water for that level of harm to befall him. She can’t imagine him not giving in as they stole his every breath. She worries for what it means that again and again his lungs had filled with fluid and in the end he did not give them what they wanted. Spencer knows he did not give him what they wanted. He knows that the last time it had gone on again and again and again and again and he did not give in and eventually they couldn’t keep him conscious anymore, he had drowned too many times, and the dark sea pulled him under the waves, and not even their flying fists could wake him again.

Merciful, warm darkness.

Why didn’t he give in?

“I thought I was there again.”

“Oh, Spence—”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m still there.”

She sits, gently, on the bed next to him.

“I wasn’t— _afraid_. Not at first. Unsubs, abductors, they don’t scare me anymore. Getting hurt doesn’t scare me anymore. Dying doesn’t either. Then things got worse.”

She’s almost holding her breath.

“I was more angry than I was scared. Trying to fight back— it just _hurt_. But I knew if I broke the likelihood of my survival decreased significantly, and Penelope’s did, too, and they were already innumerably low. I had to let them hurt her, and I just— I felt like I was already dead, Emily.”

Her heart is pounding in her chest. It feels broken. She doesn’t know why he’s opening up to her so suddenly, and he doesn’t know, either. It’s just that it’s late and there’s this beast in his chest making his breathing heavy and he wants to get it out.

“But then, I just— I kept making it worse. I don’t really know why. But I know I did it on purpose. I think I blamed myself. I think I— I still do. For them hurting her. They didn’t hurt her as badly when they were hurting me, but that wasn’t the only reason I did it.”

“Spencer, what you went through—”

“I just wanted to get out.”

“ _You did_ , Spence.”

“I wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He nods, but he looks shaken still.

“I’m going to sleep more now.”

She takes that as her cue to leave, and he burrows under the covers.

He doesn’t sleep more at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So close to the finish line! I'm kind of sad honestly. I've never written this much before, and I kind of binge wrote this within the span of a few days so I wouldn't lose momentum. It was intense.


	6. take all the courage you have left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's always darkest before the dawn, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The anxiety I have posting this chapter— _INTENSE_.
> 
> Bear with me, because it gets ugly.
> 
> But I'm physically incapable of not giving Spencer Reid some kind of a happy ending.

He’s been home for a month. Or at Emily’s for a month. He stands outside his apartment door, just staring at the familiar wood, and JJ peeks around his shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“You, uh— you good, Spence?”

He frowns. “Yeah, of course.”

Then he puts the key into the lock, pushes the door open, grabs his suitcase, and goes in.

It is intensely familiar. It is also like it is from a different life. JJ follows him in with a second suitcase and props it against the wall, closing the door after her, crossing her arms gently.

“How’s it feel?” She asks.

He looks around, tentative, like he expects something to jump out and grab him. “Weird.”

She laughs a bit, stepping forward to put a hand on his shoulder from behind.

“Yeah— yeah, Spence, I bet it does feel weird.”

He runs his fingers along the softness of his couch, picks up a blanket from the back and just feels it in his hands. “It doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore.”

“It is, though. You’re _home_.”

He hums in a way she hasn’t heard since he’d first woken up. She wonders if he’s dissociating. That would be a concerning start to all this.

“Spence? Can you turn around?”

He does, eyes questioning but clear, settling on her easily, and he seems like he’s firmly in his body, firmly in reality. She breathes out in relief.

“Do you— do you want me to leave?” She doesn’t want to, not really, but she knows he’s private, intensely private, and this is new. He needs to adjust.

He furrows his brow, looking like he’s lost in thought. “I think so.”

She smiles. She’s not hurt. Maybe a bit disappointed. But she doesn’t let that show.

“Yeah, okay. Spence— you call me if you need anything, alright?”

He nods. “Okay.”

And then she’s gone.

He roams around at first, grazing his fingers over everything, just feeling. _Old Spencer_ lived here. _Old Spencer_ was different.

But he thinks _New Spencer_ could get used to it, too.

He stops in his kitchen, bottom lip between his teeth. He needs to shop, but maybe there’s some left over. It doesn’t go bad. He opens the cupboard above his sink, gingerly, and gets out a mug. Then turns to another, where he remembers keeping it, and finds it.

And several other things. Several other _new_ things.

His brows raise. He feels a bit stupid for thinking they’d throw him into the deep end, but he’ll have to thank them later, anyways. He grabs out the tin of coffee and dumps some into the machine, pressing the red **_on_** button and watching it work.

He’s almost mesmerized. He pours some into his favorite _Star Trek_ mug and brings it to his lips. There’s no logical difference in taste between _caffeinated_ and _decaffeinated_ , but for some reason it just tastes better.

It could be his coffee machine, too. He’d splurged on a nice one a long time ago.

He sits down at his kitchen table, lifting the book he’d left there _before_ it all.

He remembers exactly where he left off.

He flips it open.

He brings the coffee to his lips.

And in a terribly, beautifully, familiar way, he reads.

*******

Sometimes, he still wakes thrashing, shouting, breaths panicked and fast. He’s taken to calling someone new, though.

He’s still shaking when he takes his flip phone and presses the contact. It’s 3am. He feels bad, but he had said _any time_ , and he’d meant for times like this.

Luke answers near immediately. “Hey, Spencer. What’s up?” He asks, like he doesn’t know. Spencer smiles at that.

“I, ah— bad dream.”

“That’s cool. I mean, it’s not cool, but it’s cool that you called.”

Spencer gives a small laugh.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“It was just the usual. It really shouldn’t scare me anymore, but—”

“You know that’s not how it works, man.”

“It,” being PTSD. Or C-PTSD. He’s not used to the C.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Roxie misses you.”

“I was just there yesterday.”

“What can I say, she loves you.”

Spencer smiles. Again. Luke is good at getting him to smile. “Hotch once talked about ‘ _The Reid Effect_ ,’— said it happened with animals. And, ah, children too. It was— before everything. It was one of my first cases.”

“Well, ‘ _The Reid Effect,_ ’ doesn’t seem to be in effect anymore.”

“I’ve changed a lot.”

“That’s cool. I like who you are now.”

Spencer pauses. “You do?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“You didn’t know me back then,” he points out.

“I didn’t need to. The Spencer I’m talking to _now_ is enough for me.”

“I just don’t know if it was for better or for worse.”

“If what was?”

“The change.”

“There is no _better or worse_. There’s just Spencer. It’s all you.”

Spencer fidgets, picking at his comforter. It’s soft.

“There are— definitely different Spencers.” He laughs, lips then pressing to a line.

It doesn’t phase Luke. “You’re still the person you were back then. You’ve just grown.”

“What, you think all this was just growing pains?” There’s a smile in his voice. He’s developed this dark-type of humor sometimes. They don’t all appreciate it.

But Luke says, “I wouldn’t go that far,” and Spencer can hear a small chuckle.

“I just— I wish I could know who I would have been. Without … _Everything_.”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I told you. I like the Spencer I’m talking to now.”

Spencer smiles.

“Thanks, Luke.”

*******

“Spence?”

He peers up over the edge of his book to where JJ sits, legs crossed, on his couch.

Sometimes his friends do this thing where they just show up at his doorstep and come in and sit with him in an oddly comfortable silence.

He knows it’s because they’re worried.

“I know you said you don’t want to talk about it with me, but—”

He feels his fingers clench around the novel, a foreign text, like he used to read.

“I— I just think … You should talk to someone, you know? A friend.”

He breathes out a sigh because his therapist has been pretty insistent on the same thing.

“I don’t know which part you want me to talk about.”

“Any part.”

“Well, I was fairly cetain I was going to die. I’m still not really sure how I didn’t, to be honest with you. And sometimes it feels like maybe I should have.”

He’s just talking to appease her. It doesn’t feel good, but it also kind of does.

“What do you mean, Spence?”

His hands tighten. He’s bending the book in them. He shakes his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t really like the person I am now.”

“You’re still Spence. You’re still my best friend.”

“I don’t feel like Spence.”

She hesitates. “What— what do you feel like?”

“I don’t really feel like anything. I don’t think there’s much left inside me.”

“Of course there is, Spence.”

His mouth contorts. The book his dangerously bending now. He forces himself to release it from his grasp onto the brown, wooden surface of his tabletop.

“You know, it didn’t really matter to me. I think I stopped caring about my life awhile ago. Maybe after prison. I’m not sure. I didn’t really care if she shot me in that parking garage until I saw Penelope, though. I didn’t want to be caged again. Milburn was enough.” He takes a breath. “I didn’t think it could ever get any worse than Milburn. It was naïve.”

She can see her swallow, thickly, heavily. “You survived Milburn, though. You survived this, too.”

“I almost didn’t survive either.”

She can’t really deny that. She’d known his danger in prison. She’d known it with The Believers, too.

“I’m glad you did, Spence. I’m really glad.”

He pauses, eyes busying themselves with the skin on his hands that are spread out and splayed, tense, across the table. There are a few scars torn in there. His eyes trace them. He wishes they weren’t so obvious.

“Are— are you glad, Spence?”

His lips press together firmly, his brows drawing together. “I think so.”

It hurts her that it’s just a _think_.

*******

Two months.

Penelope’s gone back to work. Or— that’s not right. Penelope’s gone back to work in a _Silicone-Valley_ -type sector, something to do with the environment. She’d moved on. The Bureau had offered to consider her. Offered her a hearing. She just didn’t take it. She said she’d had enough serial killers and sadness for her life.

The Bureau didn’t offer Spencer a hearing.

For a long time, he’d known there was no going back. He’d known he really _shouldn’t_ go back. He’d known if one more bad thing happened, and bad things always happen, the job of _BAU Profiler_ is not a secure one, it is a terrifying tightrope walk over a long and gaping abyss— he’d known if one more bad thing happened, he probably wouldn’t survive.

Be it by an unsub with a gun, a knife, a grudge to carry.

Or worse, be it by himself, alone in his apartment while the world spins on at terrifying speed all around him, a terrifying speed he simply could not keep up with any longer.

But he is lost and floundering and already breaking at the idea of not having _SSA_ in front of his name anymore.

Who is he without _SSA in front of his name_?

He’s had _SSA in front of his name_ for nearly fifteen years.

SSA is all he knows. The FBI is all he knows. The BAU is all he knows.

He is nothing if he is not **_Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid_**.

They’d called him in, and he knew what was coming.

“ _Dr. Reid, while we highly appreciate your service and value your contributions_ —”

He’d tuned out after that, mostly, only hearing in flashes.

“— _with the amount of trauma_ —”

“— _just couldn’t in good conscience_ —”

“— _it wouldn’t be wise_ —”

“— _unpredictable reactions_ —”

“ ** _But we thank you, Dr. Reid_**.”

And then he’d handed in his badge and his gun and he’d left.

Emily had driven him, because even _unit chief_ aside she’d known what was coming long before they’d told her, and while she’d tried to be nonchalant about it, he knew it was because she thought he might break down.

So he leaves the room and she’s sitting outside and she looks sad.

“ _Spence_ —”

He just shakes his head.

“I just— I need to go home, Emily.”

She breathes out a sigh, but nods.

The ride home is silent, in spite of Emily’s best efforts. Spencer just doesn’t talk.

He’d been doing well.

He’ll do well again.

But he’s mourning, and Emily knows that.

They both climb the stairs to his apartment and he looks so dejected and a bit disappointed when she walks in the door after him. “Emily—”

“Spence, I don’t think you should be—”

He’s over by the kitchen, standing next to his dining table, and before she knows what’s happening there’s an echoing **_CRASH!_** and she jumps, eyes wide, as a coffee mug flies from his clenched fist and into the wall opposite him. The pieces of ceramic shatter to the ground. Her mouth falls open.

There’s silence, then, except for his breathing, too-heavy breathing, and sniffling, and she sees he’s crying.

“Spencer—”

“Please leave.”

“You know I can’t, Spencer.”

He groans, and slides down the wall and brings his knees to his chest and rests his head there. She can see his shoulders just … _Shuddering_.

Her heart is breaking.

“I think we should call your therapist, Spence.”

His shoulders sag a little bit more and she can hear the crying pause.

“I just want to be alone.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

He doesn’t raise his head but she can see him nodding.

He’s only giving in because he knows she won’t quit.

The ride to his therapist is as silent as the one to his apartment.

*******

It’s only been three days, and he’s just falling apart.

Plain and simple, he’s ripping at his precariously sewn seams.

He’s alone, because he’d asked to be alone, because he’d insisted, because he’d lied and said his therapist said it would be fine to be alone (he’d been thanking the stars for doctor/patient confidentiality), but he’s dissolving into this puddle of tears like he’s never really experienced before because his entire life, his entire world has finally just been torn apart.

The sobriety chip in his hands just mocks him as the insides of his elbows itch.

Through a haze of tears, of sobbing, choked up breaths, he does what he’s starting to do best and just _hurls_ it in front of him before he can really stop himself. It collides with his lamp, his porcelain lamp, and the metal of the chip just shatters it into a thousand tiny pieces that match how he feels on the inside. He almost laughs. He thinks he might.

It seems appropriate, after all, throwing his sobriety away and shattering his life into a thousand pieces. Just like the lamp. Just like the chip.

He realizes he definitely needs to call someone right now.

He has enough sense to know that if he doesn’t he’s going to be shooting up very soon.

So he calls Luke, and the entire conversation is a blur, he wonders if Luke can even really understand what he’s saying, but he comes and knocks on the door in these panicked little knocks and Spencer opens it, sniffling, tears still rolling down his cheeks.

“Spencer, man—”

He can’t even pretend and say he’s okay. He just lets him in and hands him his phone and tells him to keep it away from him because he still has his old dealer’s number memorized.

Luke looks stricken, purely stricken, and for a moment Spencer feels guilty for calling him at all and doesn’t really know why he did. He’s known others longer. JJ, Emily, Derek. They’d all seen him through his addiction, although he’d hidden it.

There’s something about Luke that’s comforting, though, because he didn’t know the _Old Spencer_. He’d barely been on the team by the time he’d been sent to prison. He only really knows the _New Spencer_. The one his therapist and the hospital psychologist tell him is definitely not broken. But he feels pretty broken right now.

Luke insists on cleaning up the shattered porcelain from his floor and Spencer just watches on the couch with his knees pulled up to his chest.

Eventually, Spencer sleeps. Just knocks out right on the couch. When he wakes up there’s morning light shining through the curtains and Luke is sitting at his table with a mug of coffee and it takes a second to remember the painful blur that was last night.

His cheeks burn.

“Luke—”

“Hey, man. How’re you feeling?”

Spencer wipes at his cheeks. They feel sticky. “Better.”

Luke doesn’t ask questions, but Spencer explains to him, anyways. Hankel. The addiction. Explains all of it. And Luke just nods and looks sad but doesn’t pity him.

He stays for a few days, returning home for clothes but bringing Spencer with him, and he can’t really protest because he knows the state he’d been in the night before must have been utterly terrifying to witness.

He picks up more therapy. He picks up more NA meetings. And he starts picking up those shattered pieces of his life.

*******

Four months.

His life mostly goes like this:

Wake up, coffee, soap opera (there’s something about the mind-numbing quality that’s appealing, like a drug but not dangerous), lunch, therapy, dinner out with a dizzying and always changing succession of his friends, narcotics anonymous, home, book, bed.

He’s glad ~~his job~~ his old job had paid on average $164,383 a year and he’d had significant savings after fourteen years working at the Bureau all while living in a tiny shoebox apartment, because he’d definitely be living under a bridge by this point from four months unemployed otherwise.

That’s a lie. Rossi wouldn’t let him live under a bridge. But the thought is there.

They all tell him he’s recovering and it’s okay that he’s not working, like he’d been caught in some terrible accident and lost all the feeling in his legs. He tells them he’s not recovering because he’s fine and should be working by now, and they all glare at him.

Penelope usually doesn’t just glare, she points a finger at him and stares daggers into his chest and says between very affectionately gritted teeth that he’s been hurt and he’s healing.

“You were hurt and you’re working,” he’d say, picking at a thread on his sweater.

“Oh my sweet, _stupid_ boy genius,” she’d reply, which would make his eyebrows raise up, because he’s never been called a _stupid boy genius_ before, “I didn’t spend four months pretending to be okay. I didn’t almost die, like, _a hundred times_ before we got taken.”

“It wasn’t a hundred times.”

More daggers in her gaze. “Would you _shut up_ and just focus on getting better?”

She’s lost some of her happy-go-lucky tact.

But he’s trying to shut up and just focus on getting better.

Sometimes he still wakes screaming, but it’s starting to die down.

Sometimes he still stares off into the distance in a way that terrifies his friends, caught up in some terrible recollection of the past, before he rockets back into the present, usually with a wheezing, painful gasp, but that’s starting to die down, too.

Sometimes he still gets these cravings that make his whole body shake and his skin itch and crawl and his brain dissolve into something toxic, but like the rest, it’s dying.

He still can’t sleep with all the lights out, and he has a white noise machine he _clicks_ on before he crawls into bed, because being in pure, dark quiet wasn’t exactly good for his flashbacks.

They’d taken his knee brace off. The skin and bones underneath look kind of wrong, but not terrible, not like it had looked before. Not scary and broken. Just like something’s off. Kind of like the rest of him. He still needs crutches, and he’s in physical therapy, but it’s still pretty nice not having a constant reminder strapped to his leg anymore.

His therapist, Charlene, always asks him to rate his mood on a scale from one to ten, one being the lowest of the low and ten being beautifully happy bliss, like it’s some physical pain, which had made him cringe at first, and he’d lied at first, and said his mood was about an eight, which she’d seen right through because it was utterly ridiculous.

Once she’d finally pulled it out of him, he’d admitted he was at a one. Maybe lower than a one. Like a subzero. She hadn’t looked startled, more like she was expecting it and was satisfied that he’d finally admitted to it.

He’d said it while looking at the floor, eyes tracing the pattern in the fluffy rug that encompassed her office, though. That was the day he’d lost his job. Or the day he’d officially lost his job. Really he’d lost his job about five months prior in a parking garage after throwing his gun to the floor. That had been his real resignation, he just hadn’t known it.

It took several appointments for the number to tentatively tick up to a two. She’d looked thrilled and he’d been confused because a two was still pretty terrible, but she’d told him any improvement was good improvement.

He’s at about a four right now. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be at a ten again. He’s hoping for a solid seven. Charlene had told him not to be a defeatist, he could be a ten again one day.

He doesn’t really believe that, though.

*******

Six months.

He’s made it to a seven.

He doesn’t exactly feel stable, but he does feel like he can’t spend any more time bouncing back and forth between therapy and sitting on the couch watching _Days of Our Lives_.

Emily has made a deal with the Bureau, or not really a deal so much as an _insistence_ , that he can consult on cases, he is _perfectly capable_ of consulting on cases, he is a _doctor_ with a useful specialty, _trauma be damned_ , he is perfectly capable of consulting on cases—

So long as it is from the safety of his own office.

It makes him bitter, a little bit, he misses the field and he misses the jet and he misses his badge and he misses the revolver strapped to his hip and he kind of resents the FBI in the smallest degree for closing their doors on him. But sometimes he has breakthroughs and sometimes he saves lives anyways and it’s something, at least.

It’s more than he’d had locked in a basement.

Marbury University, too, welcomes him back with open arms, with much more ease and much less restriction than the Bureau, probably because he won’t have a gun or actual lives in his hands, just the pliable young minds of future generations.

He starts out teaching one class. He hadn’t liked that, but it had been his therapist’s idea, and considering the very thin ice he’s dancing on that is his mental health, he decides to follow the professional’s advice this time.

And after his first class, he just feels—

 ** _Good_**.

When Emily, and then JJ, and then Penelope, and then Derek, and then Luke, all call him in near perfect succession to ask how it went, he says for the first time in a long time those three words, and he says them with a smile that’s actually real.

 _It went well_.

They all respond in excitement, with varying degrees of intensity, the most being Penelope, who gets so excited and overwhelmed that she ends up sobbing into the phone about how proud she is of him and how _they really got through it, didn’t they_?

And for the first time he does feel like they got through it.

He feels like he got through it.

His life is still a little frayed and tattered at the edges, it is still rough on the corners, it is not perfect. But he teaches, and he consults, and he goes to therapy twice a week, and he goes to narcotics anonymous once a week, and his life has purpose and his life feels _good_.

**_Spencer, I need you to understand that your life isn’t over._ **

**_You aren’t broken._ **

**_You’re traumatized._ **

Finally, he feels like maybe those words could actually be true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnd that's a wrap!
> 
> This has been an insane journey of hours of ADHD hyperfocus writing. And I am so, so appreciative to anyone who has stuck around through this messy, angsty plot. I'm considering writing more in this universe through one-shots in the future, there's still so much to explore, but I feel like the central story is pretty wrapped up.
> 
> Anyways, gonna go cry now!


End file.
